Wine Country and Yosemite

While we stayed a few days with the Zarcone's, they were mostly uneventful, resting days.  Allen got to spend time with his family and the guys got to catch up on sleep, letters, reading, etc.  It was there that I caught up with the blog through to Vegas.  :)  Oh how slow I am at these things. 

We did do quite a bit of singing, however.  We sang at St. Apollinaris, the Zarcone's home parish. After two nights with Mrs. Zarcone, we went out to Allen's grandparent's house and sang for them as well. Later that day, we went to Yosemite and "HALLELUIAH" we had the camera back.  The camera and our skill with it cannot do justice to the beauty we saw in Yosemite Valley.  Unlike the Grand Canyon, we actually ventured out on a bit of a day hike.  We went up to Vernal Falls on what the map called the Mist Trail.  It was no misnomer.  Once we had hiked a couple miles in to the base of the falls, everything began to be gently pelted with a light mist.  It grew heavier and heavier, increasing the foliage around us and intensifying the color of everything from the wildflowers to the grasses to the black granite around us.  My descriptions do about as little justice as the pictures.  Consider this an advertisement to GO TO YOSEMITE.  The conundrum for us on this trip after we have seen the beauty of five National Parks is which one to return to first.  :)  Here are some pictures and explanation of Yosemite.

Vernal Falls:

At the top of the Falls:

A really sweet rock providing scale:

NorCal - City by the Bay and Wine Country

The Howards hosted us well in Berkeley and Zach had arranged a couple of concert opportunities that really paid off.  Before we performed, we went to church in San Francisco and met up with my best friend, Tom Dudro.  We toured the most basic part of the city that every tourist ought to see--Fisherman's Wharf.  There is so much to do along that stretch of road, that we had little time to take them elsewhere.  On a rather interesting side-story about Keaton, he was conned into helping with a break-dance show.  Every ethnicity was represented in this break-dance team--except white.  So, when the host asked for "two really tall white guys" to volunteer from the crowd, Nathaniel and I pointed out Keaton rather dramatically.  :)   They ended up picking him and renaming him to make him "black," which they associated with "cooler than he was before."  His nickname? Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  Could be worse, right?  At least now he had basketball skill.  The other guy was granted the nickname of the "greatest black man who had ever lived" (to which most of us thought they would say either MLK or Michael Jackson [seeing as he had just been beatified]).  Wrong.  The other white guy volunteer had the name of Obama thrust upon him.  Their show was talented and funny.  Their politics... well, it was San Francisco, what should we expect?  We then returned home to change and get ready for two performances.  

The first place we performed was the Howard's normal church.  In Berkeley, to attract potential Christians to the gospel, they promoted a really relaxed atmosphere.  The pastor reminded everyone to listen with open minds and open hearts and we sang, in English and Latin.  It was awesome to bring into the open air voices that were not heard in that city very often.  Voices of medieval and renaissance Christianity were brought to the ears of moderns and post-moderns for a dialogue that many had never thought about.  I hope it struck much of the congregation as a bit more than "cool" (which is was) and served as a testament to the roots of Christian worship through music.  After all, that's why we do these concerts in the first place.  :)  

The second venue that Zach cooked up was a warehouse in an industrial district that acted as a multi-purpose room including but not limited to Christian worship.  With the relaxed setting, we mixed it up in a similar structure to what we did in Southern California at my house.  Several Hillsdaleans were there and we were more than happy to hang out with them afterwards.  When things settled down, we headed up to Allen's house in American Canyon to catch up with the family we had not seen in too long-- the Zarcone's!

Cavorting up the Coast

My rule was: we all had to wear board-shorts as we went up the coast so that, should we see an inviting beach, we could run out and jump in the water without anymore effort than taking off our shirts.  So we began winding the way up the Pacific Coast Highway through areas I'm familiar with (Santa Monica, Malibu, etc) into areas with which I was less familiar (Santa Barbara and almost everything north of there).  We hugged the coastline all the way through.  We stopped at a few missions (Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Carmel).  It was awesome for me to see them again and remind the guys who hadn't been out West that even this coast had some older history (they were building the missions around the same time the country was being founded).  It was also nice to know that California's history was, from its first contact with the West, Christian.  We also enjoyed the coastline and parked the car at a mostly empty beach below Big Sur but above Goleta.  Water temperature did not deter us and we sprinted in and played in the waves.  While it was cold, it was also exhilarating and we remained in the water longer than expected.  We then checked out some of the rock formations along this coast. Although there were no tide-pool creatures, Keaton led the way climbing a large rock that jutted almost straight out of the water about 100 feet into the air. On top, we found a lot of bird poop (several inches of dried layers of it) and a couple dead cormorants. There were some live birds that were also annoyed with how close we were coming to their nests.  The view was astounding, but the climb down was a bit rough on our feet. In the end, totally worth it for an unbeatable view of the not so peaceful Pacific Ocean.  

The last place we stopped was the city of Monterey.  A gentle bay hosting a fascinating fishing population, we saw otters, seals, sea lions and the ever ubiquitous sea gull (attempting to steal fish out of the mouth of the sea lion).  In town, we walked around the historic district and saw how important Monterey was to early California history.  We had some delicious seafood and then finally turned inland (sort of) to go up the East Bay.  

As dusk closed in, we decided we would find a tall hill and watch the fireworks shows of the whole Bay Area from the tallest hill we could find.  It was at the top of a gated community, but we found one in Fremont.  :)  It was delightful.  We literally could see hundreds of fireworks shows going off for miles around us.  From Fremont (look it up on GoogleMaps), we could almost see the the city of San Francisco.  We could see shows in the East Bay, shows in Oakland, and show across the Bay as well as nearly every show directly in the San Jose area.  Glorious.  Finally, as night cloaked us in firm darkness, we descended the hill and drove into Berkeley, CA where our friends the Howards live.  I have always loved Berkeley for its color and weirdness.  It was made so much more lovable by the knowledge that a Christian family lives there on purpose to preach the gospel to those colorful people we often dismiss as "damn hippies!"  :)  The Howard's house was amazing and we had two venues at which we could sing.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself because this is only supposed to cover the Coast.  

California - Here We Come!

So, hello everyone! After a long hiatus in which we seemed to fall off the face of the earth, we have returned.  I told you we'd be back.  Right now, we have one week left of road-tripping, but it looks like I have a lot to catch you up on before we get to any and all of that.  

So, driving out from Vegas, making good time... we headed straight for the land of glitz and glam, the land of facades and film: Hollywood.  Taking the guys to Hollywood and Highland I showed them where the movies premier at the Mann-Grauman Chinese Theater, the Kodak theater, and the Walk of Fame.  The most interesting part (since all of us love good movies) were the hand prints and foot prints of famous actors and actresses through the years right in front of the Grauman.  We walked down Hollywood Boulevard and took in the sights (of course, we saw the sign). We also noticed that a lot of street vendors were selling Michael Jackson paraphernalia.  In that town, you would have thought he had just been canonized.  We checked out a cool record/DVD shop famous out west called Amoeba Records; that too had colorful people and more than one tribute to the King of Pop.  When we had been satiated on grime and overall chicanery on which Hollywood thrives, we turned south and headed to my house.  Not much had changed, and I had a lot of people to catch up with.

The next day, Keaton and I went and explored historic Pasadena, one of the oldest cities in the Los Angeles area.  That night, we went Swing Dancing (something we hadn't done since Dallas) and had a blast.  The next day I showed the guys Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach. Our stay in Huntington afforded us ample time to walk on the pier and take in the sights and sounds of "Surf City, USA."  Because of traffic, we didn't have as much time at Laguna Beach.  After driving through the canyon, we sprinted out of the first parking space we found (after throwing a quarter in), sprinted down the hill, removed enough clothing to swim and swam for about five minutes.  We then dried off primarily by running back to our cars.  We had made it into three oceans in less than a month.

 That night we had to return promptly for the party my parents had arranged to "host the Hillsdale boys."  We had invited pretty much everyone my family knew who might be interested in either my singing or Hillsdale.  A great deal of them showed up!  I got to see Lowell again, twice in the same year!  That hadn't happened since we'd gone to high school together.  We sang a lot that night from all of our repertoire-- sacred, barbershop, and secular (pop).  It went over pretty well and we represented the school well for my friends and family.  Many old friends stayed late and we caught up for a long time; who knows when I'll see some of them again.  

The next morning (the 4th of July), we got up early to book it up the coast on the Fourth.  Well, we didn't exactly book it.  We meandered.  And the drive itself was so beautiful it is worth a blog-posting all its own.  It's too bad we still didn't have the camera.  :(

What happened in Vegas... was pretty sweet!

And we'll tell you about it.  We all knew that moving from the Grand Canyon to Vegas would be like going from God's natural creation at its best to human edifices and institutions at their... brightest?  richest? and usually most sinful.  In what I began to call the Incarnation of Capitalism, the Las Vegas Strip (old and new) lit up before our eyes.  We had reconnoitered for a delicious dinner of elk steak (another first for me) at Nathan's uncles.  Adding his cousin, a native of the area, to our eclectic crew, we headed into town. They say the lights are bright on Broadway and we had seen the lights of Times Square and Rockefeller Center.  Vegas blinds them all.  The visual overload is impossible to describe.  The old strip is a covered mall and the ceiling is s constant light show (interspersed with advertisements).  The old strip obviously tries to appeal to the old crowd and this summers theme was a throwback to Woodstock's Summer of '69.  After several psychedelic buses, mediocre guitar solos, and suggestively groovy female dance moves, we had seen that strip and could move on.  

One thing I did enjoy about Vegas was that there was no way I could be weird enough to turn heads.  There was no way I could do anything strange enough even to stand out.  It is a city of absolute individualism (if you can afford it).  It is also a city that runs itself on the antithesis of the three monastic virtues: money, sex, and power.  While it is tempting to vow poverty, chastity, and obedience just to get away from it all, some of the  things in Vegas were pretty impressive.  The fountain show at the Bellagio was set to music (sometimes Classical, sometimes rock).  The scale models of Paris, Venice, and New York that they manage to fit into these casinos is impressive to say the least.  It is clearly the triumph of imagination to have a hotel with its own Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.  The constant slew (or sewer) of pornographic and sexual advertising throughout the city is a little less than splendid.  My theory is that in any city where there are extremes of poverty or sin, one can still find extreme examples of largesse, virtue, and beauty.  The casinos had a bit of that.  After walking a lot from one cathedral of capitalism to another, we eventually got tired enough to go home.  Vegas is a mixed bag; I'm not sure when I'll go back.  Disclaimer, this blog more than any of the others is heavily my opinion... not the entire quartet's.  :)  Allen likes Vegas a lot, but, with all his love for the city, he is smart enough not to gamble here with the "high rollers."

We woke up the next morning and Nathan's uncle gave us directions out of Vegas a bit to the North and West so that we could see the Red Rocks and pass the state park.  It was quite a view of some gorgeous geological formations.  More proof that I often underestimate the desert when I call it ugly.  The desert once we got into California, however, was fairly ugly.  I had the drive on Interstate 15 through to my hometown.  I remember every time why no one lives in that area.  Soon enough, we found ourselves in Hollywood... and the rest is history.  

Flagstaff and that grandiose hole the in the ground

So, my dad said "get a GPS, you'll get lost less."  What he meant was, "get a GPS, you'll get lost less often, but when you do, it'll be much more creative because you will have placed your trust in technology and God still wants you to know that he understands the earth a bit better (as do cartographers) than a bunch of cans of aluminum orbiting the earth and shooting down signal to a stupid little box on your dashboard."  

I was more than a little annoyed with this little Nuvi.  After a beautiful drive through the desert (yes, even I will admit that the desert can be beautiful), we remembered that the Cook's had warned us that they lived off the beaten path.  With this in mind, we didn't question when our Garmin Nuvi picked a dirt road for us to turn onto.  We trusted it and soon (as in several miles later) found ourselves on an unkempt road through a farmer's ranch.  Nathan (the driver this day) had the tenacity of a bulldog and kept driving onward.  While there was as yet no risk to the car other than dirt, we were turned back when we noticed it was private property protected by barbed wire laid across the road.  In Arizona, they mean business.  Taken severely off course and ready to crush the Garmin under the weight of our car (and ire), we called Mr. Cook who met us at a gas station and adroitly guided us home without a blink of an eye.  As it turned out, the Cook family did not live in the middle of nowhere; rather, it was a nestled valley up above Flagstaff in the beautiful forests that many people forget Arizona has.  That night, Greenlaw Baptists Church hosted our concert and were very receptive and generous.  It was a beautiful space to sing in and they admitted that hearing the Latin music was a rare treat for them.  The Cook's, as with all the large families we have stayed with on this trip, were adept hosts.  It was as if adding four guys to a big family isn't really adding much to the burden as adding to the joy, noise, and conversation.  The kids were fun to get to know and the parents kept us entertained with information about the area and their roots in Flagstaff.

After spending the night in Tim and Josh's room (which seemed to lack their presence), we awoke the next morning to delicious breakfast and headed off for our first National Park... the Grand Canyon!  We entered the South Rim and drove all the way across, stopping at the particularly breath-taking parts.  I hadn't been to the Grand Canyon since I was much younger, and Nathan and Keaton had never been at all.  It was worth the National Parks Pass that we bought to get in.  We will use the same pass to get into Yosemite, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Mount Rushmore.  It will pay for itself.  :)  After the Grand Canyon, we had quite a bit of Western Desert left ahead of us until we arrived in Vegas that evening at another of Nathan's uncles.  

Albuquerque - A Study in Color

On down the spine of the Rockies we roared.  I was driving out of Colorado, so we were roaring.  Or I was roaring and trying to get the guys to join in... they though it was lame.  When the bellicose sounds of elation had subsided, we discovered that New Mexico is much prettier than any of us expected.  We also discovered that there is a Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Don't worry, there is good reason you've never heard of it.  If you have, then you know why we hadn't heard of it before we drove through it.  

New Mexico, on the whole, surprised me in many ways.  The northern part of the state is very much mountainous, not the desert scene I painted in my head growing up--complete with adobe filled arroyos.  In fact, the mountains do not subside until you get to about Santa Fe.  Furthermore, there are more ranges than just the Rockies on your Western side.  Soon you find yourself flanked by the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the East.  The mountains do shift in hue from the greens and blues of Colorado to the deep reds leading you subtly into the high desert.  Albuquerque sits at an elevation of 5,314 feet above sea level.  That was higher than Fort Collins (5003) and Denver (5280)!  As we arrived in Albuquerque, we noticed that we were in a valley with mountains on three (nearly four) sides.  The crisp, clean blue signaled that we were still fairly high up.  

We arrived at the home of our Mu Alpha brother, Stephen Ford.  His family greeted us with much warmth and with a TON of GREAT FOOD.  It was so nice to be close to delicious avocados again (I ate nearly the entire bowl of guacamole BEFORE dinner).  The Ford family's warmth overflowed into their ease of conversation and their broad knowledge of the United States.  After making fun of North Dakota, I learned that Mr. Ford was from there (good times).  Mrs. Ford, on a much more cultured note, was born and raised near me on the border of Orange and LA county.  Clearly, this family had a bit of everything.  They had travelled the world in their missions work and had instruments from all over and an cosmopolitan understanding of world cultures.  It had all reflected in their son of course, but it was so edifying to see it in the parents as well.  We had the pleasure of singing for their family and the pride of musical brotherhood as Stephen could join us for some of the songs.  :)  As the sunset, they took us into their backyard to show us the Sandia mountains around their house.  Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the mountains lit up with a deep red glow.  The sky was so dry, however, that the sunset was not as we had seen for so long in Michigan, the East, and the South.  Instead, the sunset lit up the ground beneath it and a bit of the sky, while the remainder of the sky held on truculently to its vibrant blue until it had to concede its color to the deep red band of clouds beneath it.  The clash of blue and red continued until the whole evening was consumed in a deep shroud of purple.  That night, we watched some Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and dozed off to bed. 

We awoke the next morning, went to our respective churches and were off again.  Today we set our GPS for Flagstaff, AZ... if only we knew how lost it would get us.  :)